Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

A Northern Irish bakery’s refusal to bake a cake iced with a pro-gay slogan on account of its owners’ Christian beliefs was not discriminatory, Britain’s Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday.

Just to clarify, I am largely (although not actively) anti religion - best description I've ever heard of religion is that its the real original sin,
I think the DUP is a little qualified stain on an already heavily stained political spectrum,
and am certainly NOT anti LGBT

I simply believe that NO single interest group should gain preferential rights in law over any let alone all other.

Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

I'm not sure what I class myself as, I believe in God, I believe in the concept of what a church should be - yet I don't agree with the concept of what the church currently is

I'm proud to say I'm not a homophobe or a racist but part of me does support the bakers on this

Like they say they had served the customer before and were not against him
I agree they were being homophobic in refusing to support gay marriage but that part of me that supports the bakers just keeps saying that it was made illegal to force the straight view on everyone - why should it be legal to force the lgtb view on other people

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Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

I would wish the couple well in their partnership,
but as they at best allowed themselves and their love to be deliberately used by an activist lobby group targeting anothers beliefs I find I can't - and it was targeted - read the full story.

If this were a Christian or Muslim group deliberately targeting a similar but clearly LGBT cake shop and ordering a cake saying "marriage is the sacred union between a man and a woman" let alone something more 'activist' and were refused. I would expect the end result would again be to find for the targeted bakery.

Words do matter to pretty much everyone.
I would actually prefer that any couple could innocently go to their local cake shop and get their cake with blessings whatever the bakers personal beliefs were, or be the better person and be tolerant and accept others genuine beliefs if they were politely declined with an explanation
... rather than acting with some lobby group to deliberately and actively go out of their way to target anothers equally legitimate (like them or not) beliefs - which certainly appears to be what this couple did in this case

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Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

Originally Posted by SoggyMoggy

If religion wasn't involved would the outcome have been different, if they were just a cake shop that refused to bake a LGBT cake.

LOL The cake has resisted all questions on its sexuality; as is its right,
It says it is just a simple jam sponge and cream with some chocolate sprinkles, that the icing message was not necessarily its personal beliefs and was made a little overly sugary for its taste, but other than that had no strong feelings either way about it and asked for its privacy to be respected ..

The clear personal beliefs of the bakers is the whole of the issue and the case found that the bakers were happy to serve the couple and it was the specific cake message which impacted their own beliefs that they objected to.
- as it seems it was intended to ...

Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

So despite again a stated deliberate 'tit for tat' what is the 'Christians' response?

Surprisingly Very 'Christian - despite the simple fact I believe its highly likely the 'Christians could have sued and would have won.

Quote:
Responding to the refusal to hand over the images, Ciarán Kelly, deputy director of the Christian Institue, said: "We’ve been in touch with the company involved and thanked them for their impending refund.
"We think it’s great that we live in a country where people are free to express, or not express, their sincerely held beliefs – the point underlined so emphatically in court yesterday."

Now if only queerspace took a 'Christian' approach .... (pun intended)

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Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

Originally Posted by Maharg1

Your original post is incorrect

The cake said "Support Gay marriage" so wasn't a slogan it was a 'promotion' and the court upheld the bakers right not to have to promote something against his beliefs.

I acknowledge that my initial post erroneously omitted quotes from around the phrase, as it was a quote from the article,
... as it would seem you perhaps didn't notice or chose to ignore..

BUT If we are being pedants, I'll briefly play:

Please confirm that you are legally qualified to technically review a supreme courts judgement, and have confirmed that slogan was NOT legitimately used to describe the message anywhere in the case?
... Particularly as secondary school English tells us that 'promote' is a wider process (possibly that the court was passing judgement on) and 'a slogan' just one of many possible mechanisms within a promotion process.
It seems to my lay but reasonable English that the message was adjudged part of a promotion process, hence the message itself could quite correctly be commonly identified as a slogan, .. rather than a simple message of Love, Good Will or even Congratulations for example.

I have no doubts that the result/ruling as delivered by the supreme court is a correct and just one.

Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

Poor old Jeremy will not now be able to force Jewish printers to print Palestinian terrorist organisations literature. A coarse example of where we were with the original ruling. The law decided some years ago that gay rights are supreme to religious rights with the csae of the B&B refusing unmarried couples to stay there.

A publican can refuse to serve anyone and not give a reason for the refusal. If the person refused service then complains of discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation the publican loses their licence (and worse). Now refusing to serve someone because they are gay would be stupid but why must the publican be on the back foot if he decides that the drunk in front of them has had enough but might take offence because of their (unexpressed) sexuality?

We create a lot of unforseen consequences when one minority is promoted over others in the name of equality.The govt is going to do it all over again with ethnic monitoring of pay as well as gender monitoring. If Trade Unions were worth anything this wouldnt be necessary

Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

Trade unions are worth it. The problem is that the majority of stuff they can do has been stripped or restricted by governments. That and the fact that some of the big players will only do anything if theres big publicity in it.

Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

I think the bigger picture has been lost here.
These selfish individuals wasted a lot of taxpayer's money to prove a point which didn't need to be proved.
If anyone tells me that they don't want to deal with me, I go somewhere else.
I might make a bit of noise there And then and on social media just to upset them, but surely a reasonable person would not waste other people money just to be told they're right (or wrong).
I wonder if the 2 gays run a bakery and I asked to have "gay love is wrong" printed on a cake, would they do it?
Personally I don't care what colour, religion or sexuality people are, but I do get peed off when anyone wastes my taxes.
There are politicians doing it, that's their job (wasting taxpayer's money I mean)

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Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

Theres a couple of good points to be made there king12345

Apparently it was the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland that funded the cost of these queerspace antics NOT queerspace themselves.. Somewhere around £300,000.
and I stand by the mild (IMO) usage of the term antics given the stated situation.

Now surely, with both being 'protected characteristics' (let alone the very questionable nature of the queerspace antics from the word go) the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland should have funded both or neither.

AND given the supreme courts ruling, surely the Equality Commission should be seeking a refund of that taxpayers money from queerspace and perhaps giving it to the JUSTIFIED Christians to cover their somewhat smaller but still significant costs .....
... and the Equality Commission person who authorised this sacked given their seeming prejudiced or at best simply poor decisions.

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Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

Just read through some more detail on this case and it would seem I was mistaken.I initially thought it at least was a cake ordered by a genuine loving couple for their same sex wedding, even if the message was more political than bridal

It would appear this wasn't a cake for a wedding at all.
From what I can now gather, it was just a cake with an after the order promotional message added by a queerspace activist targeted at a Christian baker

If that is the case, that the Equality commission EVER agreed to support this and that ANY court found for them is utterly beyond sense.

Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

Originally Posted by king12345

I think the bigger picture has been lost here.
These selfish individuals wasted a lot of taxpayer's money to prove a point which didn't need to be proved.
If anyone tells me that they don't want to deal with me, I go somewhere else.
I might make a bit of noise there And then and on social media just to upset them, but surely a reasonable person would not waste other people money just to be told they're right (or wrong).
I wonder if the 2 gays run a bakery and I asked to have "gay love is wrong" printed on a cake, would they do it?
Personally I don't care what colour, religion or sexuality people are, but I do get peed off when anyone wastes my taxes.
There are politicians doing it, that's their job (wasting taxpayer's money I mean)

Re: Belfast bakery did not discriminate in gay cake case

what I meant was if the Unions were active in this area the govt wouldnt need to even contemplate having to do ethnic monitoring. When I was a big tough trade union rep we had processes in place for this and that was 40 years ago. Whe i retired my role as a rep was managing change, alomost on behalf of the employer. Unity is powr but when the senior admin outnumber the rest of the workforce it is difficult to take effective action and incidents of bad behaviour by an employer are then almost impossible to resolve when in the past you could just embarrass them by getting a thousand peopel to take their tea brak at exactly the same time and disrupt the managemtn echelon's meeting by standing under their windows and shouting. the 2 times table.

Originally Posted by renegadeimp

Trade unions are worth it. The problem is that the majority of stuff they can do has been stripped or restricted by governments. That and the fact that some of the big players will only do anything if theres big publicity in it.